My online lesson technology

Like many piano teachers, I've moved all my piano lessons to the internet during the current health crisis. I have been teaching a small number of piano students online for a number of years now, so its not a big transition for me. In this blog post, I'm going to discuss my standard lesson technology.

Video Conferencing Software: In general, I'm not very found of internet lessons because the audio quality always seems terrible to me despite my best efforts. The main problem with the audio in any video conferencing software is that the sound is optimized for voice transmission which typically includes limiting the audio frequency range transmitted. Basically, you can hear a lot more sound than is being transmitted in any video conferencing software. You wouldn't think this lack of frequency range on both the upper and lower end would make a big difference, but unfortunately it does. However, we don't have a lot of choice in this area at the moment and there are websites that have tested the main two competitors, Skype vs. Zoom, for audio quality and the consensus is that if you configure all the audio settings in Zoom appropriately, then Zoom is superior. The three key audio settings in the Zoom audio advanced tab are: 1. Set "Suppress Persistent Background Noise" to "Disable", 2. Set "Suppress Intermittent Background Noise" to "Disable", and 3. Make sure there's a blue checkmark in the "Show in-meeting option to 'Enable Original Sound' from microphone" box.

USB Microphone: I use a Yeti Blue USB microphone as the audio input to my computer and love it. The microphones built into laptops are pretty poor generally and as a musician you need good audio quality. As a side benefit, this microphone is great for making recordings of yourself or students playing the piano. When I want to make an audio recording of myself, I hook my Yeti Blue microphone into my laptop and use it as an input to Audacity (a free music recording software for windows and mac computers) and Voila, I have a recording of myself with great audio quality. The other wonderful feature of this microphone is that it has a headphone jack. Because the headphone jack is on the microphone, you don't get a lag in time from the sound going into the computer and then going out to your headphones. Basically, you hear what is going into your computer. The only downside to this microphone is the price, but because I use this microphone a lot and audio quality is important to me, this item is an example where I went high end in my online lesson technology. If you can't afford a high end microphone, acquiring an external microphone is still an excellent idea, look for one that has a usb connection in your price range.

Good Quality Headphones: Headphones can also make quite a bit of difference in what you hear. If you have a great quality input going through your USB Microphone into poor quality headphones, the sound will also suffer. I splurged a number of years ago on Sony MDR-7506 professional headphones. In my home studio, I have a big grand piano and a digital piano. Sadly, I often practice on my digital piano because my family also lives in my house and the grand piano is very loud. Studio quality headphones have great audio response and  are headphones that don't generally hurt your head or ears even if you wear them for hours. I also like having a cord because I can plug the headphones into my Yeti microphone, laptop, or my digital piano. These headphones are also expensive, but I've been using them for over 10 years now (and replaced the ear pads once), so its an investment for the long term. Once again, if you can't afford a high end headset, get the nicest headset that has a wired connection and will plug into an audio jack.

Adjustable Laptop Stand: I have a Samson LTS50 adjustable laptop stand for my piano studio mostly because I like to teach standing up instead of sitting down. That way I can stand back from the piano to hear the total sound a bit better and I can also move around the room more easily. I use Onenote (try evernote if you are a mac user) software for all my student lesson records and with a tall laptop stand, I can put my Microsoft Surface Computer on the stand and take notes with my electronic pen (and send them to the student using an email link). With online lessons, I adjust the stand down and it sits by the piano ready for my computer. The other great feature for me with this laptop stand is that it folds up so I can put it into the closet when I'm done with my teaching for the day. Fortunately, this laptop stand costs a lot less than my headphones or microphone. A lot of my musical friends don't have an adjustable laptop stand, so they are using ironing boards for this purpose which is cool.

Microphone boom stand: I wanted a cheap way to hang an additional webcam over my piano for my online lessons. However, sometimes I think you could do a lot of teaching just fine without the additional camera. I have recently noticed some nice internet lesson setups where the teacher has a camera on an adjustable arm that connects to the piano reading desk, but I do love my boom. Its very inexpensive and I like the fact that it doesn't actually attach to my piano. I'm very protective of my instrument and prefer not to have objects make a lot of contact with the finish on the piano surface. So, how do I rig the webcam on the end of the arm? Well, I went into my toolbox in the garage and found some velcro strips and jump rings. So, I attached the webcam to the end of the boom using those. Its generally very stable and I can adjust the angle of the camera a good bit which is very helpful when trying to make sure that the student sees the keyboard instead of the top of my head. I do have to use a USB extension cord from the webcam to the computer because the webcam cable wasn't long enough. In addition, I had to test a number of USB extension cords to find one that would transmit the video properly.

Additional webcam: I went low end with my additional logitech webcam because I really don't need great video quality for my online lessons, average quality is plenty good. I do like the arm coming out of the camera because it gives me a way to attach it to the boom stand arm with velcro. The webcam has a usb connecting cable.

Powered USB Hub: My computer only has one USB input, so I use a powered USB Hub (it looks similar to this) into my computer. Using a hub allows me to connect my USB microphone and the second USB webcam into my computer at the same time.

Brydge Bluetooth Keyboard: I love my Surface, but I bought it originally to be a big tablet so I could use it to read music and turn pages using a foot pedal. My Surface came with a rather flimsy keyboard  as shown in the first photo, but I found out that there are other sturdier keyboards like the Brydge that you can attach to your surface (or ipad) and the great thing about being attached to a sturdy keyboard is that I can angle the camera. So, I put my Surface on my laptop stand and angle it up for my head at the start of the lesson and I can easily angle the laptop camera down (without adjusting the stand) so that it can look at the piano keys from a side view. One camera, two views and now my Surface doesn't fall on the floor when I try to reorient the camera. Yeah! Brydge also makes similar keyboards for ipads.

In a conference call with my fellow EMTA music teachers discussing online lessons, some people mentioned using their cell phone as a camera that could be handheld and moved around to highlight specific items or even specific measures in a student's music. This is a great way to get an additional camera for your studio, but make sure to "mute" the audio so you don't have feedback. Zoom is currently free to use for an unlimited amount of time if you only have two people talking to each other, but if you add a third person (like your iphone as an attendee), then you need to pay for a subscription or keep your lesson under 40 minutes. To add my camera as an attendee, I would click on the lesson link in the email or call into the lesson on my phone and use the phone camera video. Also, when you are using your iphone as the second camera on a zoom call, make sure that your control panel setting allows the screen to rotate between portrait and landscape mode.

And one more idea, maybe you happen to have an old webcam roaming around your home gathering dust. Any spare webcam could be plugged into your computer (nice to have the extra USB ports for this) as a spare pointing camera instead of having your iphone attend your zoom lesson. Then, you would just go to the video ^ arrow inside Zoom and toggle between the video sources to access the camera.